What Doesn't Kill You
by Storiesfromthebluebox
Summary: Vyvyan becomes life-threateningly ill. This affects himself and the rest of the group, Rick in particular, in ways they couldn't have imagined before.
1. Chapter 1

**Beforehand, I would just like to say a few things.  
I used to not be a big fan of using diseases for a fic. I think these things shouldn't be trivialized for a 'cute' or 'hot' story arc. That's why I was hesitative at first, but I wanted to give it a go. I want to see how the dynamic between these characters would change if one of their lives would be seriously threatened in a non-funny way.**

I would also like to point out this is fiction and I'm not in any way a medical expert, nor do I have first-hand experience with the particular disease and treatment depicted in this fic. I'm just a person who likes to write. So this will probably have quite a few inaccuracies when it comes to the medical side: things I should have included but overlooked due to a lack of experience, or things I included but aren't accurate, and I hope you can forgive me for the sake of artistic liberty. However I will do my best to portray it as realistically as I can in a general sense. First and foremost, this story is about the friendship and love between these guys as a family as well as on other aspects, in extremely difficult times. But if you really feel the need to correct me on something, please do.

I hope you enjoy this story.**  
**

* * *

It all started with a fight, Rick remembered. Or, nothing had really started, really. He read a lot of war comics, and he thought the whole concept of starts and ending was stupid. They were just random points in time where the writer decided to start telling the story. It begins with the occurrence of a problem, and it ends with a neat solving of that problem. In reality though, there were no real beginnings or endings.  
There was just things happening, and sometimes those things are good, and sometimes they are utter rubbish.

But that's getting ahead of everything. As much as the thought beginnings and endings are stupid, this was probably where he would start telling the story if he would ever write a book. Not that he would. It would probably be a ruddy awful book. He knew people sometimes wrote books on these kind of things, but he didn't see why anyone would want to read them. It was all completely depressing if you asked him.

Getting back to the point: it started with a fight. As we know, there is nothing unusual about Rick and Vyvyan fighting, and there was nothing unusual or different about this particular day and fight either.  
Everything was normal, or, as normal as it ever was before the day everything turned around.

It had been raining for days. It was almost as bad as that time England flooded and there had been sharks outside. There were no sharks now, though. Neil mentioned he'd seen a few turtles floating around the house, but no one paid attention to him anyway. He was probably on drugs, or whatever these stupid hippies do in their spare time. There were no turtles to be seen anywhere, as far as Rick could tell. It was all bloody boring. Anyway, the rain was bad enough that they couldn't go outside and they had been locked up in the house for far too long. Neil was meditating in the middle of the living room, and Mike was

Vyvyan had taken his explosive potions to the kitchen just to annoy the others, and him in particular, Rick was convinced of that. He was sitting on the couch trying to read one of his war comics, but was repeatedly disturbed by an explosion coming from the kitchen table. He observed him from the corner of his eye. There was a bit of soot on his nose and he was looking rather excited. Rick knew it would be dangerous to disturb him when in the middle of experimenting, so he would have to go about this subtly.

Rick put his comic on his lap, leaned towards Vyvyan and tried to smile politely. "Vyvyan, could you stop those noises please, thank you very much, I'm trying to _wead_." Demonstratively, he picked up the comic and turned the next page with vigor, to show how engaged he was in this utterly intelligent piece of lecture.

The punk didn't even look at him. "Rick, I'm in the middle of something extremely important, so shut up".

Stay calm, Rick told himself. You're a responsible adult, you can do this without wanting to hit him in the face. "And why exactly can't you do these experiments in your_ woom_?"

"Why can't you read the bloody comic in your room!?" Vyvyan answered, still not looking at him, but at a boiling potion that had too much of a resemblance to lava for Rick's comfort.

"Because, Vyvyan, I'm actually twying to expand my intellectual abilities. Tell me, how does making things explode help society in any way? Finding a cure for cancer, are you?"

"I'll help society by shoving a bloody fork in your throat if you don't shut your bloody face!" Vyvyan yelled, now looking at him.

"Well that's nice, isn't it?" Rick said, as he put down the comic. "How utterly mature. I'm sure being violent solves everything".

"SHUT. UP". His friend was screaming at the top of lungs now. "Why can't you just SHUT UP? You've been trying to impede on my experiments for days now!"

"Oh so _I'm_ the one bothering _you_ one am I!?" Rick screamed, standing up and the comic falling off his lap onto the ground.

"YES!" Vyvyan answered.

Merely to piss him off, Rick grabbed a potion off the table and ran away with it. It wasn't long before Vyvyan tackled him and crushed him with his weight, his back landing on the hard floor painfully. In a matter of seconds they were rolling over the floor and playing a game of 'who can give and dodge the most punches'. Rick dodged a few until a fierce jolt of pain shot through his jaw. _You bastard_, he thought, and tried to roll Vyvyan over. To his own surprise, Vyvyan's body gave zero resistance and he overpowered him in no-time. Normally Vyvyan was much too strong to be affected by any attempts of Rick to free himself of his grip, but now, the punk rolled over as easily as turning around a piece of steak in the frying pan.

He was just about to give him a good jab on the jaw, when he realized what was happening to the boy beneath him. Vyvyan was panting. No, no, that wasn't right. It was more like hyperventilating. He desperately tried squeezing air through his lungs and nose, and made a whole lot of noise while doing so. Assuming this wasn't some kind of trick, he got off him.

"Vyvyan, are you all right? Vyvyan…?" Unsure of what to do, he took him by the shoulder and shook him lightly.

Vyvyan couldn't answer. He just lay there panting and trying to gasp for air. It was like he was drowning, and the sounds he was making were scaring him. It sounded like his lungs were old, rusty, clogged pipes. The disturbance had Neil awakened from his meditation and ran to their side.

"Oh no, guys, Vyvyan is like, dying! Someone help him!"

"Shut up, Neil", Rick snorted.

He looked at his friend in panic. What should he do? Give him the mouth to mouth? He would forever call him a poof if he did that.

"Give him a smack on the lungs", Mike advised.

He decided that would suffice, and gave it all he got. It helped, because Vyvyan found the power to sit straight and stumble to the couch, where he slowly steadied his breathing.

"What in the name of Cliff's trousers was _that_?" Rick asked, watching him suspiciously.

"No… thing…," Vyvyan brought out between two huffs. Rick wasn't convinced.

"Well it didn't look like nothing to me, young man! Also, is that blood on your arm?" He stared at his arm in horror, where blood was swelling up in a small wound.

It took Vyvyan another minute to steady his breathing enough to be able to talk normally again. It felt like ages, and it made Rick feel uncomfortable. This was not right. Vyvyan was tireless and tough, not weak. Not someone who collapsed after a bit of a fight.

"Yes, I'm bleeding!", Vyvyan said surly, having found his voice again. "Thanks for that, by the way".

"But how?" Rick couldn't hide his shock.

"Because you beat me, you twat!"

"Oh come on, I barely touched you!"

"Well I'm bleeding, so apparently you did!" Rick gave him a hard look, but Vyvyan just made a cross-eyed face at him.

"That sounded like, really heavy, man", Neil said. "Are you sure you're okay, because…"

"I said it's nothing!" Vyvyan screamed, after which he gasped for air again, but turning it into a cough.

"You should stop smoking, Vyv", Mike commented. That was the last word anyone said on the matter.

He would have forgotten about it if that had been the end of it, but it wasn't. The rain stopped the next day, and they were all relieved for a few minutes, until they realized they had no business outside anyway. Vyvyan had been whining about the rain and not being able to get away from them non-stop, but when it was finally dry, he didn't go outside. Instead he was lying on the couch, watching the Bastard Squad.

"Aren't you going to go outside, Vyvyan?" he tried.

"Nah", Vyvyan said, and he grinned. "They're going to blow up the Poof Squad now".

Rick eyed him suspiciously before shrugging it off. So what if he felt like watching TV more than going outside. There wasn't anything strange about that, was it? Except Vyvyan barely got off the couch anymore these days but to go and have a piss. This was certainly not normal behaviour for Vyvyan, and after a few days he got rather tired of it.

"All right, that's just about the bloody limit, young man!" he yelled, making his anger clear by crossing his arms. "You've been lying around for a week now! For God's sake, get your bottom off that couch!"

"What do you care what I do with my bottom, poof?"

That was a question Rick didn't have an answer to, so he said: "I don't! I don't care at all! I'm just getting rather tired of smelling it all the time, is all!"

His punk friend made one of his cross-eyed faces at him. "Why don't you just sod off, then!"

Another two days later, Rick caught him panting against the wall after going up the stairs. Vyvyan had told him to piss off, which was normal, but it seemed as if there was something more intense about it. He started to pick up on the fact Vyvyan avoided going up the stairs when any of the guys were around. He always stayed up to watch the dot long after the rest had gone to bed before going upstairs. Rick heard him once, and he had paused and rested at least three times before finally reaching the second floor.

Besides the stairs, the punk also seemed to be avoiding food. Not that the food in this house was something Vyvyan ever got excited about before, but this was different. He didn't even seem to enjoy it when Mike had gotten everyone hotdogs.

He noticed the red spots for the first time one morning at breakfast. They were just under his shirt, on his uppers arms, and some on his wrist. Then some time later they appeared on the right side of his nose and in his neck. At some parts it had started bleeding from all the scratching. And since when had he gotten so thin? He used to have a fat belly, but his shirt was sagging around his waist. Rick had asked a few times what was wrong, but he usually said something like: "Shut up". He didn't want to talk about it.

Soon enough, Neil and Mike also started to pick up on Vyvyan's strange behaviour. They were all so used to the punk's occasional violent outbursts and furniture going out of the window on a daily basis, it was hard not to notice the lack of it lately. It hadn't stopped immediately. At first, Vyvyan just got a bit out of breath after throwing something or smashing him around the head with it, but it didn't stop him from doing it. It never got as bad as the day of the fight anymore.  
Until one afternoon he tried lifting a chair to smash Rick over the head with it, but gave up halfway. The chair was too heavy, and he had too little breath. Rick saw Mike raise an eyebrow, but all he said, as he took a sip of his coffee, was: "Had a late one, Vyv?"  
Vyvyan hadn't tried throwing stuff anymore ever since.

They went to the Kebab & Calculator, and they all had beer, except Rick, because he thought drinking was stupid. He drank fast and seemed to be more energetic than he'd been in a long time, when he suddenly sprinted to the bathroom. When he still wasn't back in fifteen minutes, Rick went to if he was all right. He found him hanging over the toilet and throwing up every few seconds. He threw up until all he was spitting was just gall. Rick just stood beside him, not knowing what to do, but having enough decency to know he couldn't just leave him. After half an hour, the punk had stopped throwing up, and he sat with his back against the tiles of the bathroom, his face sweaty and green. His forehead felt hot when he felt it.

"Vyvyan?" Rick sat down beside him.

"What". His voice sounded weak.

"Vyvyan, I think you need to see a doctor".

"I don't want to see a bloody doctor".

"Wait here, okay? I'll get Mike and Neil"

Vyvyan had too little energy to protest. They carried him out of the bathroom together, hand put him on his chair. He kept saying how he didn't want to go to the doctor, but a few words from Mike were enough to shut him up.

"Vyv, this has been going on for long enough. We're taking you to the hospital, and that's the end of it".

He went to get the car, while Rick and Neil kept an eye on Vyvyan. Not that he was in any condition to leave on his own.  
Rick waited outside, standing in front of the front door, keeping out an eye for the car. He felt a sudden nervous feeling coming over him, a dark feeling, and he wrapped his arms around each other in an attempt to hold these feelings inside.


	2. Chapter 2

The ride to the hospital was completely insufferable. Not only because being in a car had brought back his nausea and it felt like his guts would come up and out of his mouth every time they drove over a bump, (they'd given him a plastic bag to be sick in) especially with Rick's driving style, but also because those bastards wouldn't shut the hell up.

"I tried telling you this earlier, you know!" said Neil, who was sitting next to Vyvyan on the backseat. "About Vyvyan. But you wouldn't listen, since none of you ever listens to anything I say anyway…"

"Oh, would you get over yourself, Neil!" Rick hissed when he passed the car in front of them with a frightening speed. "This isn't about you, you know. For God's sake, would you stop acting so self-centered".

"Calm down, all of you!" Vyvyan shouted. "If you're going to take me to the bloody hospital, at least do it without being a bunch of girls!"

"Don't be so sexist, Vyvyan", Rick said disapprovingly.

"Take a left here, Rick", Mike instructed. He was the only one keeping his cool, but even his voice was slightly tense, and his mouth was a stern line as he stared out over the road.

Vyvyan wondered if this was what Mike looked like when he was worried, but he didn't have time to think about it as more gall rose up in his throat. Quickly he opened the bag before he would spill it all over the car upholstery. The last thing he wanted was to ruin his car.

It took them a lot of shouting -both at each other and the traffic- and horrible driving to find the hospital, but by some miracle they managed to get there without Rick crashing the car and getting them all killed. This was a slight disappointment to Vyvyan. In his opinion, he would have done all of them a favour by it. He would much rather be in an exploding car than in the bloody hospital.

He wanted to be a doctor, but he really didn't really see the point in seeing a doctor himself.  
Yeah, he'd been having trouble breathing lately, woken up drained in sweat every morning and feeling too tired to walk much further than the bathroom, but it wasn't like he needed to see a bloody doctor because of that. It probably was one of those nasty viruses he learned about in college. It had to be. The itching rashes were a bloody drag, as well, but he could live with it.

Rick asked if he could walk, and he said that of course he could, bumface. But his head was dizzy and his legs were shaky as he got out of the car, trying to stand on the asphalt of the parking lot. After a few steps, he lost balance and smacked on the ground. He was embarrassed as Rick helped him up and put an arm around his shoulder to help him walk, but there was no point in resisting. By the way, he was secretly glad for his lungs. The parking lot was long.

Apparently someone had called the hospital when Vyvyan had been being sick, because they walked straight to the counter and Mike told the counter lady they had an appointment. He gave her Vyvyan's name, as well as his own phone number. She told them to take place in the waiting room attached to the hallway and wait for the doctor to come get them.

Sitting down was bliss, even if he had been walking and standing for maybe fifteen minutes altogether. Exhausted and dizzy, the hall cradled slightly before his eyes. He tried closing his eyes, but it didn't help much. It still felt like he had a bloody hangover, but ten times worse. Somewhere far away, he heard the voices of his housemates bickering about something, but it was just background noise. Listening and making out the words would require effort, and he didn't have a whiff of energy left. He never knew throwing up could make you so tired. Not that he minded not having to listen to those idiots. Maybe he should throw up more often.

He drifted and didn't know how many minutes had passed until Rick shook his arm and the doctor stood before him. She was a stout woman in her thirties.

"You must be Vyvyan", she said. She had a light Bristol accent.

"How did you know that?"

"Well, there's not many people with Basterd for a last name. I'm an old friend of your mum. You look like her". She smiled.

Vyvyan didn't know if he was supposed to get excited about that. He just looked at her stupidly.

"Anyway, my name's Doctor French, you can call me Silvia if you like. If you'll follow me to my room, please, Vyvyan".

"Mrs Silvia", Rick said, getting up, "My name's _Wick_. I'm Vyvyan's best fwiend, and he can't walk very well at the moment you see, so would it be all right if I join you?"

The doctor looked at Vyvyan. "He's lying. He's just a complete bastard I happen to live with", he explained.

She turned back to Rick. "You can help him walk to the door, but after that, you'll just have to wait here, I'm afraid", she said friendly. Vyvyan grinned.

When they sat in her room, the doctor asked him if he would like something to drink.

"Not particularly. Have you got any kebabs?" All this throwing up had made him quite hungry.

She laughed hard at that and said she hadn't, but she had a sandwich left and she would give it to him if he liked, because he looked like he could use it. He said he did, and she waited patiently while he ate it like a hungry wolf.  
Then she started asking him about all of his symptoms. He told her about his breath, his night sweats, and showed her the rashes on his arm as well as the recent ones on his back and neck. She made notes and nodded frequently.

"Right", she said eventually. "We're going to give you a CT scan to see if we can discover anything unusual. You usually need an appointment for that, but we'll make an exception in your case".

She led him the Radiology Department and the room where the scan would take place:  
a room with a big, round machine that looked sort of like a tunnel. Some bloke (the CT technologist, apparently) asked him to lie down and remove anything metal he had on him. Scornfully, he took off his nose ring and his studs.  
Apart from that though, he was rather excited about what was going to happen next. But before the scan could start, he had to get an IV injection. This took some time, as the bloke helping him had to find a suitable vein at first, and clean the spot with alcohol. The bloke explained this was done to highlight the organs on the scan. Now Vyvyan already knew all of that, but he'd never seen it up close.

"Cool!" he grinned, as he studied the way the injection was attached through patches and tubes.

"Now you may feel a bit of a strange sensation", CT Bloke said, "but it won't hurt".

As the injection went in, he could feel the fluid rush through his arms, and an intense warm feeling spread through his chest.

It was no trouble at all to lie still for 30 minutes as the computer moved up and down his body, making a weird noise. Going up the elevator and walking through the hallway had made him tired, and he lay perfectly still as he watched the red laser lights creeping up from his feet to his shirt, over his head and back.

Mike, Neil and Rick were waiting for him next to the door of the doctor's room, leaning against the wall and all looking equally bored. Rick was closely examining one of his bogies and Neil had fallen asleep standing up. Mike had been making paper planes from the hospital folders and he was lazily throwing one on an already significant pile. Each of them seemed relieved and nervous at the same time when Vyvyan and the doctor came back, except Mike.

The doctor told them the results of the test would be done in a few days, and they would get a call. Vyvyan knew this was the way it worked, but it seemed to deeply upset Rick for some reason.

"You let me _wisk_ my own life to drive this poor sick young man to the hospital, and you're only going to get the results in a few _days_? What kind of society is this!?"

"I'm sorry, but that's the way it is", the doctor said.

"All right, time to go now", Mike said as he pushed Rick towards the door and smiled apologetically. "Goodbye doc".

_"Fascists",_ Rick muttered as they walked out of the room.

"Need a hand, Vyv?" Mike asked, turning over to him.

"No that's all right", Vyvyan lied. He felt better than when he got here, but he'd been standing for a while now, and he could already feel his body become tired. It was a relief when they were back in the car. Mike drove them back, which allowed Rick and Neil to bombard him with all sorts of stupid questions.

"Did they touch your bottom?" Rick wanted to know.

"No they didn't touch my bottom, what do you think they have? A degree in poofiness?"

"Uhm, uhm, my turn", Neil said. "Do they use any vegetable medicines?"

"I haven't got a medicine yet, because I don't know what I have yet, do I Neil!?"

"Were there any sexy nurses?" Rick asked, making that stupid oinking noise.

"If there were, I don't see why any of them would be interested in you!"

It went on like this for a while, and by the time they were home, Rick's and Neil's voices had long faded away, and he'd fallen asleep. When he woke up again, he was lying at the couch with a blanket, and it was 2:00 AM. He felt too tired to go up to his bedroom. It was the first time he was sick of being so tired.

He spent the next couple of days playing Monopoly, sometimes with the whole group, sometimes with Rick alone. In the moments he and Rick got in a fight and he smashed the game at his face, he forgot about it for a moment. He forgot he was ill, and that he had results of the scan soon, or any of that bollocks. Everything was all right in those moments.

On Tuesday, when he was having a relatively good day and sat on the kitchen table being bored, the phone rang. Mike picked it up.

"Mike the Cool Person here".

"Vyv, it's your doctor". He reached Vyvyan the phone.

"Hello", Vyvyan said.

"Vyvyan, it's Doctor French".

"Hello", he repeated. He didn't know what else to say. His throat felt tight.

"Vyvyan. We found something on the scan, and it doesn't look good. It's a huge mass in your abdomen, mainly around your lungs and upper chest, that isn't supposed to be there".

"What d'you mean?"

"It could mean a number of things. We don't want you to worry yet without knowing what it is, dear, but we've referred you to an oncologist and we recommend you go see him tomorrow and have another scan taken".

Oncologist.

Doctor French was still talking, but he only kept repeating that word inside of his mind. Oncologist. Oncologist. On-co-lo-gist. Suddenly he felt a strong urge to smash the phone against the wall and shatter it into a thousand pieces, or smash anything really, as long as he wouldn't have to hear another word on this rubbish. He didn't want to see a bloody oncologist and what they had to say about any scan. He didn't want any of this.

That afternoon, he told the others. The next morning they were back at the hospital. A nice man called Doctor Richardson came to get him, but Vyvyan thought he was a bastard anyway. He was the Oncologist. Oncologists were bad news. You didn't need to be a medical student to know that.

After the second scan, the diagnosis was clear. Despite him having learned about the disease in college, it didn't get through to him the first time the doctor said the words. He didn't understand. _This must be some kind of sick joke_.  
Hodgkin Lymphoma, stage four. Doctor Richardson explained it was one of the most common types of blood cancer that was generally easily curable, but he didn't want to hear it.

"BUT HOW?" he shouted, to no one in particular.

The doctor started listing some of the possible causes, but he didn't want a bloody answer. He wanted out of here. He wanted to be sick. He wanted to punch these walls. Everything was a haze in his mind, and the only things he registered were Neil going: 'oh heavy, heavy!' and Rick's flustered face. Things probably happened after that, - they told him later he'd vomited all over his trousers- but that was the only clear thing he remembered from that moment: the way his face looked. He didn't know why, exactly. Maybe because he hadn't held it possible for Rick to give a fuck about anyone but himself. But that was the least of his problems.


	3. Chapter 3

"_Cancer?"_

The word felt uneasy on Rick's tongue. Cancer was a strange word to him, a swear word. It was a disease he associated with dramas on the telly, romantic books and his uncle Harry who died when he was ten, but not with Vyvyan. Vyvyan couldn't have cancer. It was a ridiculous concept. It didn't match his reality. In reality, nothing ever happened to them and their boring lives. In reality, the worst thing that could ever happen to Vyvyan was him cutting off his own finger in an attempt to show them some stupid trick. He'd still lived in that reality only a minute ago. But now it was gone. As the People's Poet, he was an expert when it came to words. But he had never understood until just a moment ago how just a single word could literally change everything. He stared at Vyvyan, who had the same stupid face as he'd ever had. It looked the same, yet everything was different.

"There must have been some kind of mistake," Rick said.

"It's not a mistake. I'm very sorry," the doctor said.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Vyvyan announced, and he got sick all over his trousers.

That was when everyone started panicking. Or, he and Neil started panicking. Mike tried to calm them down, and Vyvyan just sat there.

Finally Mike got them to shut up by saying he didn't like this any more then they did, but they had to listen to the doctor for Vyv's sake. It was the slight trembling in his voice that made Rick stop screaming. It was very rare that Mike lost his cool, and the fact he did now meant things were serious. This was real. He needed to get himself together now. He tried to breathe and think of Cliff Richard songs.

_The young ones, darling, we're the young ones. And young ones shouldn't be afraid._

It helped a little to mentally sing these lyrics to himself, but it still felt like he was in a dream as he walked Vyvyan to the hallway, and asked a nurse for a clean pair of trousers. When they got one, Vyvyan took ages to change in the bathroom. Rick knew the punk was probably weak, but there was no way he would actually go inside and do it for him.

"Are you all right in there, Vyvyan?"

Vyvyan answered he was completely fine answered, and it felt like a normal conversation. But there was nothing normal about these circumstances. It was like he was watching a movie with them in it, and they were actors playing themselves. Even his own face looked wrong as he looked in the mirror. God, since when did he look like such a bloody cry-baby?

When Vyvyan had finally managed to change, they went back inside. The doctor gave them a speech about the wonders of chemotherapy, which basically meant they would pump his body full of drugs, after which said drugs would kill cells. The good news was that it would kill the bad cells, the cancer cells, the ones that might cause him to die if they didn't get treated. The bad news was it would also kill the good cells, and that meant he would become even more sick. It was hard to believe this was about Vyvyan.

"Possible side-effects are tiredness, sickness, hair loss… "

For some reason, the thought of Vyvyan going bald scared him more than all the other things he heard. He'd seen him without hair before, of course, but that had just been one of his stupid potions. This would be permanent. Or at least until whenever the bloody cancer would go away.

_If_ it would go away. _No, stop it,_ he thought to himself. He couldn't think like that. Of course it would go away. It had to go away.

As the doctor explained, he just nodded, saying "yes, yes, of course", like he was listening, but really, all he could think about was the knot in his stomach and the cancer in Vyvyan's blood. He imagined the expanding cells as growing, evil tumours destroying his housemates body from the inside out as they spoke. The punk just sat there, arms crossed, looking straight ahead into nothing.

It was in the car on the way home when he spoke again, when they were in the middle of a discussion about who they should phone to tell the news. So far, the list of people they had come up with were his friends, and his mum.

"Don't tell mum," Vyvyan said. His voice sounded smaller and more fragile than it ever had.

"Vyvyan, she's your mother," Rick said. "I _think_ she would want to know about this."

"Spare yourself the trouble, Rick."

"Give me one good reason your mother shouldn't know about this!" Rick snapped.

"Because she doesn't bloody care!" Vyvyan said, shouting now. At least he _sounded _like himself again, and for a few seconds it was almost as if everything was all right. But then it hit him again. Everything was not all right.

No one spoke after that, and the silence in the car grew heavy, almost palpable. It was so awfully silent that Rick wanted to scream. But what did you say to your friend who just got diagnosed with cancer? He didn't know, and Mike and Neil obviously didn't know, either.  
So they all just sat in silence, each of them wallowing in their own misery.  
Vyvyan stared out of the window like an angry teenager who didn't want to talk to his parents. Mike's expression was unreadable behind his sunglasses.

Neil's face looked like the face of a someone who'd just seen the apocalypse happen right before his eyes and had accepted his fate. Which wasn't much different from usual, really. At least some things stayed the same.

As soon as they arrived home though, it was over and out with the silence. Vyvyan marched into the kitchen and grabbed a cup out of the sink. It shattered as he threw it against the wall.

Rick opened his mouth to say: _"That cup cost me 50 cents, young man!"_ but shut it again just in time. Instead, he asked: "Would you like some water, Vyvyan?"

"NO."

"Maybe you should, like, calm down and sit down for a minute…" Neil tried.

"I DON'T WANT ANY BLOODY WATER, I DON'T WANT TO SIT DOWN AND I'M. NOT. CALM," Vyvyan shouted. He threw another cup on the floor.

"Leave him to it, guys. He needs to get it out his system," Mike said, grabbing a chair sitting down on it.

And so the next cup went against the wall, and the next, and when he was out of cups, he went for the plates. One by one, each of them crashed against the wall and covered the sink and the floor in a carpet of splinters. Meanwhile, Mike watched and encouraged him.

"Good one, Vyv! Go for the glasses!"

He cheered as Vyvyan swept all the glasses out of the closet, which landed on the floor with a deafening noise. Knowing it took very little to wear Vyvyan out these days, Rick figured he must be exhausted, but he didn't stop until he'd thrown literally everything there was to throw. But the punk seemed beyond caring as he wrecked every object in the kitchen he could get his hands on. Rick had seen Vyvyan being violent more times than he could count, so really, this was anything but an unusual scenario. In fact, Vyvyan seemed more like himself than he'd seemed in days. But he'd never seen him so beside himself with rage as he was now.

Rick had also never seen him so vulnerable as Vyvyan sank to his knees, completely out of breath, sliding his hands into his hair. He sat like that for maybe five minutes, breathing heavily. Rick didn't realize what was happening right away when Vyvyan's sounds started changing. Wait, was he _sobbing?_ Vyvyan, who had called him a poof and a girl as long as he could remember, was sobbing on the floor. Any other day, he would gladly have made fun of him for this. But those times seemed ages ago now.

"It's all right, Vyv," Mike said, and he rubbed his shoulder. "Neil will make us supper and wash your trousers, and then we'll all have a laugh, eh?"

Vyv's whimpering went on for a while, and they just sat with him, without saying anything. Maybe in another time, in another life, they would have told him to shut up or felt mildly uncomfortable to see Vyvyan cry, but they all seemed to understand that the rules of the game had changed. The peculiar thing was: nobody tried comforting him, either. Not after Mike, anyway. What were you supposed to say? _'Cheer up, mate?_ _Have a pint?'_ It was as if the four of them had a wordless understanding that they couldn't share what Vyvyan was going through. But what they could do was keeping him company as he was going through whatever he was going through. And that's what they did.

"I don't understand," Vyvyan said later, when he had finished sobbing and taken place at the kitchen table. His face was still a bit red. "No one in my family's ever had cancer. Well, I don't know about my dad. Mum never told me what happened to him…"

"It's probably from all the chemicals in the food, Vyvyan," Rick said. "With all these fascists poisoning our food, you could get cancer from anything these days."

"That's part of why I'm a vegetarian, right, because…" Neil began.

"Oh, shut up your poofs", Vyvyan said.

It was then that Rick realized that maybe, nothing all that much would change. Vyvyan may have been sick, but he was still Vyvyan. Nothing about that was going to change. And he was still Rick, and Neil and Mike were still Neil and Mike. He had never been happy about that before, or even cared at all, but now he was actually a bit happy they were all here, at the kitchen table. Not that he would ever admit that to any of the others.

And maybe, just maybe, Vyvyan would actually pull through. Rick may have had a principal mistrust towards hospitals, because he believed they were all run by fascists anyway, but he'd seen the doctors that would be treating Vyvyan. As much as he hated to admit it, for people working for fascists, they had seemed rather nice. He believed they were dedicated to making Vyvyan better. Besides, they had said he had a good chance of complete recovery. For the first time that day, it truly felt like everything might be all right.

On Friday, Rick took Vyvyan out into town to buy new tableware. When he'd asked him to come along, Vyvyan had rolled his eyes and wondered out loud who cared about those _stuuupid plates_, but he had followed Rick into the car anyway. Although he had loudly complained when Rick had played his Cliff Richard cassettes in his car, Rick suspected him of being secretly glad to have an opportunity to get out of the house. He had been lying down and sleeping all day yesterday, and he'd been bored out of his mind.

They picked the cheapest set of plates and cups they could find, because they figured with idiots like Mike and Neil, they wouldn't last long anyway. It was all their fault. With the last bits of money they had, they bought themselves ice cream. Vyvyan couldn't walk long distances and had to sit down a lot, but other than that, there was nothing to remind them of the cancer situation. On their way back, they sang along with Cliff Richard's _Living Doll_ at the top of your lungs.

The first chemotherapy session was scheduled on Monday. Before the treatment could start though, Vyvyan needed a small operation to have a tube implanted in his chest. Doctor Richardson had explained all this to them on the day of the diagnosis, but none of them had really paid enough attention to understand. So Vyvyan explained it to Rick again when they were sitting next to each other on the couch in the living room, after the others had gone to bed.

"It's basically a small tube that goes into my chest, up to my collarbone and into a big vein, and the last six inches stick out of my chest. Now, that's where the drugs go in…"

It was nice to hear him talk about this in a calm and medical way. It made Rick believe Vyvyan was above all of this, that he could overcome this.

On the day of the small operation, Vyvyan didn't show any nervousness as they drove to the hospital. It was a small surgery that only took two hours, and he didn't need to stay the night. Rick was secretly glad for this. Everything didn't seem so serious when their housemate could just stay at home. After the surgery, when they went to see him in the hospital bed, he was curious to see the tubes sticking out of his chest. To his disappointment though, the wound was closed with tape. It was strange to imagine they would pour the cancer drugs through that small white spot on his chest.

That evening, the evening before the first chemo, Rick once again waited until Mike and Neil had gone to bed, and he and Vyvyan were alone.

"Vyvyan?"

The punk looked at him, with that typical expression of his. "What?"

"It will be all right, you know."

Silence.

"Tomowow, the chemo. And, if you want someone to go with you, I could, you know, come with you."

"I don't need anyone to go with me, you girlie."

Rick stood up. "All right, well, it was _just _an offer…"

"I mean, you can come with me, if you want," Vyvyan added quietly. "It's not like I particularly need someone to go with me, but if you insist…"

"Right. Well, I'll come with you then. Are you going to bed?"

"Nah, I'll stay on the couch for the night."

"Goodnight, Vyvyan."

"Nighty night," the punk said, flipping his fingers in a V-sign.

Before going upstairs, Rick briefly paused in the doorway and looked at Vyvyan, who was looking at the dot on the telly. It reminded him of a moment a little over a year ago, when his housemate had been in that exact same spot, in the same position, and it was almost as if no time had passed at all. In this moment, everything was it should be.


	4. Chapter 4

The day after the diagnosis, Vyvyan had been lying in bed. Not much else. He liked to sleep, because then he didn't have to think about the bloody cancer. He didn't know what cancer cells looked like, but he pictured them as tiny red monster trucks that grew bigger and poisoned all the healthy cells with their exhaust fumes. He hated knowing there was something inside his body he had no control over. He spent quite a lot of the day punching holes in the wall. It took him a bit longer than it used to, since he felt tired. But that didn't keep him from trying.

He slept.

He punched.

He still hadn't called his mum.

When Rick had asked him if he wanted him to join on his first chemotherapy session, he'd said no, of course. He didn't want Rick to think he was a sissy. But he then he suddenly felt awfully aware of the tube hidden under his shirt and in his chest, and he thought of the drugs going in there, and that he had no idea what it would feel like, and that it maybe terrified him more than he would ever say out loud. Maybe having Rick by his side wouldn't be so bad. He had never imagined himself thinking this, but maybe seeing his stupid face next to him would be comforting. It was astounding, really, how having cancer had turned him into such a bloody poof. But he could not exactly afford to be picky. The chemotherapy would take three hours, and even that bastard Rick would be better company than no company at all.

Right before he went to sleep, he told himself to stop being a coward. If he was going to fight this, he would have to go along with all the bollocks coming his way.

He wasn't hungry the next morning. His throat felt tight and dry. After continuous insisting of Rick, Neil made him eat a bowl of lentils that was completely revolting, but he just shoved it in as quickly as he could.  
He drank two glasses of water because Dr. Richardson had advised him to drink a lot of water beforehand. Besides water, he'd also packed the last bag of crisps they had left in the house. Nobody complained about him taking it.

Because they had to be there a few hours beforehand to have some blood drawn, they had to leave early. The blood was taken by a strange nurse who told him it might be a bit "ouchy" before the needle went in. He rolled his eyes to Rick. It only hurt a little. He thought of Dr. French and the sandwich she'd given him. He would like to see her right now. The hospital felt like a much more hostile place without familiar faces.

He didn't know what was worse: the waiting or Rick's attempts to entertain him with stupid games during the waiting.

"I spy with my little eye… something beginning with the letter.. b."

"What begins with a b?"

"The word I'm looking for", Rick answered, clearly frustrated at Vyvyan's ignorance about this game.

"Ah. Err. Is it my bottom?"

"No, Vyvyan, don't be disgusting. It's that water bottle over there, you see? You have to guess what object in the _awea _I'm referring to".

"But I can see the bottle, can't I?"

"Well, yes, but you have to guess…"

"If I can see it, what's the point of playing this stupid game?"

"Oh, never mind! I'll go look in the hall downstairs if I can find some magazines for you to _wead_, okay?"

He came back with a pile of magazines that consisted mostly of girly bollocks magazines and one Playboy. Needless to say, he picked the latter, and they spent the rest of their time flipping through it and discussing which ones they would shag. It resulted in a fight where they both said no one wanted to shag the other anyway. They were both silent for a minute after that.

"Are you scared, Vyvyan?" Rick asked suddenly.

"No", he lied.

"Because it's all right if you are, you know, that's why…"

"Well I'm bloody not!"

His housemate dropped the subject immediately, which was more than he'd expected from Rick.

It was a relief when a nurse with short, blond hair came their way. "Vyvyan Basterd?" she called. Vyvyan stood up.

"That would be me".

"My name's Helen Saunders, I'll be giving you your chemotherapy today".

She spoke in a clear voice, and unlike the last nurse, in a normal, non-condescending way. He quite liked her. In any other situation, he wouldn't have minded looking at her boobs up close. Right now though, he didn't want to scare her off, she just stared at them discreetly.

"And who are you, love?" she asked Rick.

"Oh, er. My name's _Wick_…"

"He's just a stupid bastard I live with", Vyvyan said quickly, before his housemate could bring up any of that 'best friend' rubbish again.

She seemed amused by this. "Well, nice to meet you both".

As they followed her to the infusion floor, she once again talked them through the basics of the procedure: that he would get pre-medication first, how long it would take, that Rick was allowed to stay with him for the whole time. He was a tiny bit relieved about that. No matter how hard he tried to ignore it, he felt the nerves increasing with each step closer to the infusion suite. His throat felt even more dry and his stomach felt like someone was constantly squeezing it together.

The infusion room looked surprisingly comfortable: there was a TV, a bed and a few blankets draped over it. But there also was a lot of machinery with tubes and bags, and he wondered where they all would go. He noticed Rick shoving a little closer to him. Their arms brushed, the fabric of Rick's jacket against his bare arm. _What a girl_, he thought. He was probably thinking about holding his hand. In fact, if Rick had been an actual girl right now, he probably would have done it, too. Contrary to popular belief, though, Rick wasn't actually a girl. So there was no hand holding involved as they walked in.

First off, he needed to be hooked up to a monitor to check his vital signs. It looked like nothing more than a Dying Machine to Vyvyan, and he must have looked slightly distressed, because Helen reassured him it was only to make sure he didn't have any bad reactions to the medications.

The scent of alcohol was penetrating as Helen cleaned the catheter in his chest with an alcohol swab, before attaching the IV line. The line led to an infusion pump, where the drugs hung on. Even Rick, who almost hadn't shut up for a moment since they entered this bloody place, turned quiet and pale. Vyvyan himself took a deep breath and swallowed hard. Yesterday he may have felt brave, now he was shitting bricks. The process started with what they called a 'flush', which meant they'd give him a drug to keep his blood from clotting. Helen said he wouldn't feel this, but he might experience a nasty taste in his mouth, -it sure had a nasty smell- so she gave him a very sour candy to suck on.

It took another 30 minutes for the pre-medication and chemotherapy cocktail –that's what they called the Cancer Drugs, to make it sound less revolting, Vyvyan assumed- to arrive. They arrived in a green bag.

"A _chemo _cocktail?" Rick had wondered out loud. "Is it going to make him drunk, then?"

If he had been in the position to do so, Vyvyan would have slapped him. Unfortunately, he was hooked up to the pump.

So he just said: "Rick, do everyone in this room a favour and shut your girly mouth", as Helen attached the first bag to the pump.

It surprised him how bloody uneventful it all was. Mostly, it was just drugs dripping into through the IV line and into his chest, and sometimes there were 'pushes', injections given through the line. It all looked scary, but it didn't hurt, and he wasn't vomiting or screaming. He was just lying, studying everything that was happening with apprehension, but curiousity.

The anti-anxiety drugs made him woozy, and sometimes he dozed off for a few minutes. When he wasn't, he was watching TV with Rick. They only had one channel though, which was bollocks. Helen sometimes came in to check his vital signs and see if they were doing okay.

'Uneventful' had been mildly putting it. After a while he started to get quite bored and fed up with the lying around. God knows how much he hated being bored, but it wasn't so bad for once. It was better than the terror he'd felt before the chemo. Besides, it felt quite good to be kicking cancer in the bottom. Rick, who hadn't left his side until they'd come in, seemed to act relieved as well. It was like the tension had dropped, and they could talk and pretend this wasn't a highly unusual and nasty situation. They could handle this. Maybe this wouldn't be so horrible. Maybe they would really make it through this and he wouldn't die.

"Are you all right?" Rick asked softly at one point, he didn't know when.

"Completely fine, matey", he said, as he dozed off again.

They were out of the hospital before five. He actually felt quite all right. It was like he was ten pounds lighter. Still sleepy from the drugs, he slept in the car on the way back home. Neil and Mike had actually gone out of their way to put a somewhat decent meal on the table, -cooked potatoes with beans- which might as well be a bloody miracle. Even though Vyvyan had never liked beans much, he didn't complain, because he was starving.

It was later that evening after supper when he screamed his lungs out in the bathroom. Rick was at the door immediately.

"Vyvyan, what's wrong?"

"I PISSED BLOOD!"

"You did what now?"

"I BLOODY PISSED BLOOD. I'M GOING TO DIE".

"Oh… right, I forgot to tell you that. When you were sleeping, Helen told me your pee will turn red for a while".

He took a few deep breaths. "Well, thanks for telling me Rick!" he snarled sarcastically. "You're so very helpful!"

The nausea and the heat kicked in the next day. He woke up in cold sweat, feeling sick to his stomach, his chest abnormally hot. It was like he was glowing from the inside out. He called Rick through the wall, announcing he was going to be sick, and his housemate quickly showed up with a bowl for him to be sick in. As he threw up, Vyvyan wondered how pathetic he must look in Rick's eyes. He wondered if he pitied him. He didn't want to be pitied. He wasn't pitiful. But he felt bloody awful.

And the hunger. The hunger was all-consuming. It hadn't stopped since yesterday, it had doubled. Later that afternoon, Neil showed up with a bag full of groceries.

"Hello, Vyvyan. Rick told me to buy you food, right, and since I'm the only one who ever does anything around here… well at least I was, I mean, Rick's been doing some things as well...".

"Yeah, yeah, just show me what you bought, hippy".

It was bread, a thermos with tea and Toblerone. He assumed Rick had made the grocery list, no one else in the house would want to buy such a girly thing as Toblerone and make tea. Still, he had gone of the trouble of doing those things. And Neil had gone to the trouble of going to the store and buying him more food than he usually bought for the four of them all together.

"Thanks, Neil", he said.

Neil stopped on his way out, seemingly surprised.

"Uhm, you're welcome, Vyv".

He ate until he got nauseous again and he couldn't do more than lying and feeling miserable. That day, he stayed in bed. He was too exhausted to come downstairs.

There was a knock on his door early next day. It was Rick, telling him he would come in and help him downstairs. Which he did, ignoring Vyvyan's light protests and whimpers. He didn't like walking too much at the moment, but Rick insisted he would come downstairs. It was so they could keep an eye on him, he said. So the next few days were spent on the couch, which, granted, was a better place.

It was mostly Rick that did things like putting a wet washcloth on his forehead when he got too hot, or giving him food when he got hungry. If he just have had a flu or something, he would have enjoyed this. But then again, Rick probably wouldn't have gone to the trouble.

Mike usually gave the orders.

"Give Vyv some water, Neil, he looks thirsty", he would say.

Rick would jump up and say: "I will do it".

He didn't understand why Rick was so eager to take care of him. He felt like a bag of garbage. The symptoms weren't just limited to nausea now, he could feel it in his whole body. It felt all wrong. Some muscles felt numb, others randomly twitched.  
The exhaustion was like nothing he ever felt before. It was so overwhelming just talking and forming sentences was too much effort for him. Maybe his mind was tired.

It was only about a week after the chemo he felt somewhat like himself again. He was still weak, but his body felt somewhat normal, to the point where he could get up and get himself some breakfast.

"Feeling well today, Vyvyan?" Rick asked him, coming into the kitchen.

"Yes, actually!" he said with his mouth full of cornflakes.

Rick sat down next to him. "Good. That's… that's great". He smiled faintly, rubbing his neck. It was only now Vyvyan noticed Rick looked a bit tired and pale as well. It had only been two weeks since the diagnosis, yet he clearly looked different. Less like a whiny girl, and more like… a more grown-up version of Rick.

"Monopoly?" he asked him. He couldn't hold back a grin as Rick looked at him in surprise. The smile felt a bit weak and strange around the corners of his mouth, and it took him a few seconds to figure out why. That was the first time that week he smiled.

And so they played Monopoly, just a bit less violent version than usual. This didn't keep him from trying to bother Rick as much as possible though, and for once, it didn't seem to bother Rick quite as much. But he knew it would start all over again next week. He'd been wrong before. Treating this bloody disease _was_ going to be hard. It was going to be a bloody nightmare.


	5. Chapter 5

**I would like to dedicate this chapter to Rik Mayall, who died five days ago as I'm posting this. His death was a huge shock for me and it slightly influenced this chapter. At first, I wanted this chapter to be a long conversation between Rick and Vyvyan about death. I've been thinking a lot about what death and being remembered means, and I wanted to write a load of blabla about that, but now that the first shock has subsided this chapter has turned out pretty normal after all. There's still a little part of the idea left though, at the end.**

**I don't believe in forever, but I hope Rik Mayall will be remembered for a very long time, and more importantly: that he will be remembered in all the best ways.**

* * *

Vyvyan started losing his hair some time before the second chemotherapy session. Rick had found a few dots of ginger hair in the sink and more in the shower. This was the thing he had feared most of all, for Vyvyan not to look like his healthy self anymore. Of course the rashes and the weight loss were indications he wasn't well, but Rick thought nothing screamed 'I may be dying' more than a bald head. Well, except old people. Which was basically the same thing.  
He especially hated when cancer patients wore dish towels over their bald heads. He had seen it on other patients in the hospital when they went for Vyvyan's chemotherapy, and it was sickening, in Rick's opinion. He hoped Vyvyan wouldn't start wearing one of those once he turned bald. His hair had become thin and fragile, though. He didn't wear a Mohawk as often anymore.

When the second chemo approached, they all dreaded it. Two days beforehand, Vyvyan turned quiet and moody, staring into space sulkily. Neil made them all more lentils than they could eat, and Mike gave him a speech that was meant to be uplifting.

"Look at it this way Vyv: a fish may be out of the water, but at least he isn't drowning".

Vyvyan just looked at him stupidly, and for once, Rick couldn't blame him. Mike never made much sense, even to someone as intellectually gifted as himself.

"Uh, what are you doing here, Rick?" Vyvyan asked when he came downstairs with the backpack full of food they made him yesterday. He could never lift heavy things for too long, so he put it on the ground.   
  
"Yes, I know, you didn't ask, but here I am anyway, _sacwificing_ my beauty's sleep for your well-being". He sighed dramatically, so Vyvyan would understand what a noble and selfless deed he was doing.

Vyvyan looked at him for a second. "Poof", he murmured, but he grabbed his bag, walked to the car, and took place next to the driver's seat.

The chemotherapy itself wasn't scary anymore. It already felt familiar as they walked into the hall and Helen received them on the infusion floor. Even the infusion room with the smell of alcohol felt safe and familiar, even if the scent was disgusting.

Helen talked about everyday things as she prepared Vyvyan – hooking him up, cleaning his tubes with the alcohol patches and flushing him. Had they seen the recent football match? Had Vyvyan eaten all right? Vyvyan tried answering these questions as normally as he could. He'd never seen his punk housemate act so humble and_ normal_. It was a side of him he'd only seen a few times so far, and that had been during the few interactions with his mum.

Rick thought Helen liked Vyvyan, because she gave him a lot of those special candies that were supposed to fight the nasty taste of the flush drug and helped him drink while he was lying down. (The drugs made Vyvyan extremely thirsty.) This annoyed Rick just a tat, because this was_ his_ task. Normally, he would have snapped at her, but he didn't. Because after all, she was helping him, he supposed. She also brought a tape with the first season of The Bastard Squad, since Rick had mentioned last time it was Vyvyan's favourite show.

"AH, brilliant!" Vyvyan had called out with a grin. He looked excited as a child.

They had already seen all the episodes, including Rick, because they'd had a lot of time on their hands when Vyvyan had been sick last week. Rick thought the program was so boring and uncivil he'd rather stare at his own bottom, but Vyvyan erupted in shrill laughter every few minutes. He wished he'd brought his war comics, despite their reactionary character.

For the first hour or so, Vyvyan managed to stay awake, because the anti-anxiety drugs hadn't yet kicked in. Despite him having said repeatedly chemo was completely boring, they still gave him a huge dose. Rick wondered if his housemate really didn't feel a shred of anxiety. He sure would, if he were the one they were pumping drugs in.

Then after about two and a half episodes, the punk started to doze off. As Rick observed him, it hit him that Vyvyan wasn't the outrageous, crazy, invincible punk he knew him as all the time. He was only one year older then himself. A 22-year old boy with a nose ring and a few studs on his forehead, who could be weak and helpless. This had never been so painfully obvious to Rick as it was in that room, as he lay there hooked up to the pole with the bags of drugs seeping into him. His face looked only slightly more puffy around the cheeks, (because of the steroids, he had learned) his hair was frail and unstyled.  
It made him a bit scared, because it made him look more like a sick person. He'd never thought he'd be having any thoughts about the state of his housemates face, or pay any attention to it at all. But in those hours to kill, when Vyvyan slept, with only the sounds of Bastard Squad on the telly, he found himself looking at it a lot.

"Charming fella, isn't he?" Helen said, nodding at Vyvyan, as she unexpectedly walked in on him staring at him.

He looked up, feeling strangely busted. "Pardon?"

She sat down on the seat next to him. "You really like him, don't you?"

"Oh, uh…", he stammered. "Well not in a poofy way, if that's what you're asking. I don't _fancy _him or anything like that". He couldn't suppress a snort.

"Who said anything about fancying?" she said and she winked as she stood up. She checked Vyvyan's vital signs, and left the room.

Rick had no idea what she was winking about. He wasn't sure if she had just implied he liked Vyvyan, but if she had, it was a silly thing to imply. He was only here because… who else did he have? All this stuff was probably too heavy for Neil, and he couldn't picture Mike having the patience to sit here for three hours without trying to hit on one of the nurses or even patients. Vyvyan had never liked any of his friends, and his mum didn't even know he was sick. Strange as it was, he felt like he had to be here.

When he woke up to Vyvyan screaming in distress the next morning, and found him with vomit all over his bed sheet, he knew last week's misery would start all over again. And it did. The being sick, the sweating, the hunger… they didn't even fight about whose turn it was to get the groceries. Neil just went, without complaining, saying he'd be back soon. Most of their time went into making sure Vyvyan wasn't into too much discomfort or pain. He barely had time to think. He just knew he was very tired. Any moment when they could just sit down and relax was heaven sent

That night when Vyvyan was sleeping, and they all sat down tired, it was Neil who broke the silence.

"Hey, guys. I was thinking, right. This whole situation with Vyvyan has been really heavy and it really has been bringing everyone down, okay. So maybe we should like, talk about it".

"Neil, it's very rare that you have good ideas, but I agree", Mike answered. "Let's have a house meeting".

So they all took their place at the kitchen table. Rick wasn't sure what there was to discuss, it seemed very simple to him. It was nice to talk about their experiences, though. He even may have cried a little. He was secretly glad Vyvyan wasn't here to see it.

"Nobody likes this situation, guys", Mike concluded. "But Vyv needs us. So we have to keep helping him, and we have to keep it together".

Rick didn't think he would ever get used to Mike being so serious and making so much sense. The world didn't make a lot of sense to him anymore. It never did, since it was full of fascists and someone like Thatcher was in the government, but a world where Vyvyan got sick made even less sense to him.

On Tuesday, they got all his linen cloths downstairs, so he could permanently settle there. It was incredible to Rick how rapidly Vyvyan's condition could turn around. Only a week ago, he'd still had his Mohawk. He'd still seemed pretty healthy. If it wasn't for him being tired so easily and not being able to smash the furniture, you wouldn't have known he was sick. That was different now.

He needed their help with everything. When he was hungry, when he was thirsty, even when he needed to go to the bathroom: even though he insisted he could do the part inside the toilet himself. ("I'm not having you wipe my bottom!) Other than that though, there weren't a lot of things his housemate did on his own. He watched the TV on his own, and slept on his own, but that was about it. And even then Rick often stayed close or by his side. He'd even considered dragging his mattress downstairs -he didn't want him to be on his own when he broke out in cold sweat at night- but that went a bit too far even for him.

Vyvyan's frustration sometimes resulted in a lot of shouting, and then he shouted at his housemates for trying to calm him down, and then Rick started shouting back. He knew it wasn't right to shout at Vyvyan like that, so he decided to start handling it with the best of patience he could bring. Which wasn't a lot.

"Rick", Vyvyan said on Friday. The worst days were over and the peace in the house was somewhat restored. "Can you give me a glass of water, please".

Rick was filling in an assurance form for the treatment. It had a lot of difficult words. He'd ask Mike to help him, but he didn't want to seem stupid. Besides, Mike wasn't here right now. He was out applying for a job.

"Not now Vyvyan, I'm busy".

"I don't have all day, do I now!" Vyvyan snarled.

"I said I'm _busy_".

"Well I'm very very thirsty, and very very _bored_!"

"Well you're not the one having to take care of all the business, are you Vyvyan?"

"You're not the one with bloody cancer, are you!?"

"Oh, so you're more important than us because you're sick? Is that it? I have been doing nothing but take care of you for the past week! You might as well start showing some bloody _gwatitude_, young man! Or you can go get that glass of water your_self_!"

Vyvyan's face suddenly looked like he was about to cry, and Rick was immediately sorry.

"Vyvyan, I… I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry."

He put his hand on his shoulder, and considered hugging him, but decided that would be poofy. Vyvyan sniffed.

'" 'S all right. I know you've been doing a lot of things lately. I suppose if I die, you would be the one to arrange my funeral, as well".

It felt like he had dropped a bomb. "Vyvyan, you're _not_ dying", Rick said, jaws tightening. "You are fighting this and you're surviving this, have I made myself clear!?"

He really was angry. Angry at Vyvyan for daring to say something like that, for using the words _dying_ and _funeral_ like it was something that was possible. Even though it_ was_ possible. He knew that. But he couldn't allow those thoughts into his mind. Because he suspected as soon as he would do that, he was going to let in a whole lot of other thoughts he wasn't sure he was ready for.

He couldn't shake the idea now, though. It was there, lurking in his subconscious and eating away at him. The thought of Vyvyan cold and lifeless, like he wasn't the most agitated and alive person he knew, was enough to make him want to vomit. He almost did, as he lay in bed, and he pulled the sheets over his head trying very hard to ignore the feeling of choking fear that had been creeping up on him from the day of the diagnosis. He thought about Helen saying he liked Vyvyan. Was liking someone the same as not wanting them to die? He didn't know. He didn't think he'd ever really liked someone before. He'd always thought Vyvyan was a pain in the arse. That didn't necessarily mean he wanted him to go, though. He understood that now. He really, really didn't.

Death was a little bit like a wound, he realized the next day. Vyvyan had accidentally knocked himself against the hook of the kitchen table and had a pretty big jab on his arm. His condition made him bleed very easily, and it poured out like a waterfall.  
After the worst bleeding had stopped, Rick put him on the kitchen chair and disinfected the wound much in the same way he had seen Helen disinfect his tubes. He grabbed the vodka bottle from the fridge and poured it on a piece of toilet paper. Vyvyan screamed his lungs out.

"That bloody hurts, you prick!"

"Sit still, poo-hole", Rick hissed, "Or I can't disinfect it".

His housemate almost perished in pain as he brought the alcohol-drenched piece of paper to the wound. Thankfully, the job was done in only two minutes.

He thought about death when he neatly covered the wound with a plaster. When someone died, he thought, maybe it was a bit like a wound, leaving those around you injured. It left a hole, and it hurt, and after some time new skin would grow over it and it would be gone. Any physical evidence that the wound had ever been there would have disappeared. But it's short existence would keep affecting the ones that knew it had been there. Because they'd known about it. And because of that, the thought of it could still affect them. At least not until those people died themselves. He didn't want Vyvyan to be anyone's wound.

"Vyvyan, can I ask you something?" he asked, as he sat down next to him.

His housemate sighed. "As long as it's not a very boring question, I don't see why not", he said, sounding extremely reluctant, but Rick went ahead and asked the question anyway.

"Are you awfaid…? Of dying, I mean".

"I thought you said I _wasn't _dying, bum face!"

"Yes, I know, but… what if you did anyway?"

Vyvyan shrugged. "I wouldn't be doing much, I suppose, because I'd be dead, wouldn't I?"

"That's not exactly my question, see…"

"Then what exactly is your question Rick!?" Vyvyan silenced him. "Do I want to die? Not particularly! Do I sometimes wish I was instead of having to go through all this bollocks? _Yes!_"

He screamed, but his face looked broken, and Rick thought he felt his eyes sting.

"Well, don't, okay?"

"Don't what?"

"Die, of course", he said, annoyed that he had to repeat it. "Just don't… die, all right?" He gave him a hard look to make his words more powerful.

Vyvyan sighed again, but this time it wasn't annoyed, or angry. It was exhaustion. "I'm trying, Rick".

Rick changed the subject soon after that, and he felt slightly better than before the conversation. It hadn't been much of a conversation, really, but Vyvyan had said he was trying. That he wasn't just giving up. That was more than he had hoped for.

The next morning, Rick almost spit out his tea when Vyvyan appeared at breakfast. He was bald.

"Trying out a new look, Vyv?" Mike asked.

"I supposed, if I'm going to go bald anyway, I might as well do it all at once", Vyvyan said. "So I took Rick's Lady Shaver, and shaved my head". He grinned proudly.

"Shut up!" Rick screamed, furious that Vyvyan went through his stuff again. "He's joking, of course", he explained to the others. "I haven't got anything like that".

"Well I think it looks very groovy, Vyv", Neil commented, ignoring him.

"Thanks, Neil", Vyvyan said.

Granted, it didn't look half as bad as Rick had imagined. It really didn't look any different from that time he took the potion. The punk was visibly feeling better, and his grin lit up his whole face. He didn't look like a dying person. He just looked like Vyvyan who happened to have a bald head.

"Vyvyan? Would you mind if I… feel your head?" he asked that evening, when the two of them were sitting at the couch. He'd been wanting to ask it all day.

"All right", Vyvyan murmured, half-asleep, and he slightly tipped his head toward Rick.

Vyvyan's head felt smooth and cool as he let his hand slide over it. He quite liked the feeling of it. Absently, he caressed it as Vyvyan dozed off with his forehead against his shoulder. When he realized he was being poofy, he stopped. He watched the dot until he fell asleep too.


	6. Chapter 6

"Well, the girls seem to like it", Vyvyan commented loudly to Rick one afternoon.

The sun felt warm on his head. It was 16 degrees and the first slightly sunny day in March. They were sitting in the garden with plastic cups and a thermos with lemonade Neil made himself. It tasted bloody disgusting, but what else did he expect.  
He was wearing Mike's sunglasses. Rick had snatched them away and given to him to 'protect' himself against 'overexposure' from the sunlight. It had also been Rick who'd insisted he would go outside, because 'a bit of fresh air would do him good'.  
It was all complete rubbish, but if it made Rick shut up for a few hours of the day, he'd gladly sit here for a while with Mike's sunglasses drinking Neil's lemonade. To be honest, he was actually quite glad to be outside after wasting away inside for so long.

"Like what?" Rick had his eyes closed and his face turned up against the sun, probably hoping to get some tan on that snotty, pale face.

"My head", he explained. "The lads took me to a pub yesterday, and these birds all thought I was a skinhead. One of them even gave me her number". He grinned, but Rick didn't seem very amused by the story.

"That's disgusting, Vyvyan". He stopped tanning and gave him an angry look. "Lying to _attwact _birds is exceptionally sexist, you know".

Maybe he was angry because he hadn't approved of Vyvyan going out last night. Well, sod him. Rick had been in his company non-stop ever since he became sick. He deserved a bloody break. Although his housemates extreme concern could come in handy sometimes. He only had to cough and fake some shortness of breath, and Rick would rush to his side to try and steady his breathing in the best way he could think of, after which he'd give him anything he wanted for the rest of the day and he didn't have to do the dishes. Sometimes he didn't have to fake it though. His lungs felt awfully tight these days, and he'd developed a nasty cough.

"You're just jealous you never score any chicks, virgin!"

"I am not!" Rick yelled. "And if you say that word one more time I'm not giving you any dessert!"

"Virgin", Vyvyan said. "Virgin virgin virgin vir…"

"All right that's it", Rick started, eyes so big it wouldn't surprise Vyvyan if they'd fall out. "That's just about the _bloody_ limit…"

"Having a bit of a domestic, guys?" a voice said from behind them. It was Mike, dressed in his favourite tropical outfit, complete with water wings around his arms.

"Vyvyan's being silly. He's saying I'm a _virgin_". He snorted.

"You are a virgin, Rick", Mike said, getting out a chair. "The sooner you accept that… well never mind, you're hopeless".

"Told you, virgin", Vyvyan said, smiling towards Rick. There was little as amusing to him as pissing Rick off, and it was certainly a good way to take his mind off things.

"All right, all right", Rick said, pacing back and forth now. "What about that time the cash girl put her hand in my trousers?"

"She was trying to get those sweets you were trying to steal!" Mike called out.

"Damn!" Rick cursed silently.

Vyvyan was just about to open his mouth to annoy Rick some more, when he was interrupted by Neil, who came through the backdoor with a fishing net over his head.

"Hello everyone, hello, I'm here, but don't pay attention to me because you never do anyway…"

"Neil", Vyvyan said. "You never seem to tell us anything we don't already know".

"You're probably all wondering why I'm wearing a fishing net around my head, aren't you", Neil said as he took place on another chair.

"When have we ever showed any interest in anything you do, Neil?" Rick commented. "I don't know how to make it any clearer we all find you completely _bohwing_".

Ignoring this, Neil went ahead and explained why he was wearing it anyway, (it was because warm weather meant there were a lot of mosquitos outside and he doesn't abuse his body in the world he world he lives in) and they all sighed and moved onto more important subjects like the chick whose number Vyvyan had scored.

They sat outside drinking Neil's lemonade until it was around five o'clock and the sun was low, casting an orange glow over the garden. Vyvyan decided it was probably safe to take off Mike's sunglasses now, and the last faint sunbeams of the day warmed his face. He had to admit: it was quite nice being like this, sitting in the garden and drinking that bloody awful lemonade with the others, like everything was normal. Normally he hated normal, because it was so bloody boring. But he was all right with normal now. It had made him forget about the tightness in his chest and his next hospital visit for a bit.

When it got too chilly, Rick threw an arm around him to help him get up and get inside, while Mike and Neil cleaned up the plastic cups. Inside on the couch, Vyvyan wrapped himself up in his favourite blanket. Mike ordered pizza and they watched the telly complaining about how nothing exciting ever happened until he felt himself become heavy and fell asleep.

He would long back to that peaceful moment a few days later. He woke feeling like his lungs were imploding. He couldn't breathe. His chest was hurting. Panic took hold of him as he desperately tried to squeeze some air through his lungs. It barely worked. _Oh dear._

"HELP!" he squeezed out. "Rick…" his voice died away.

Rick, who'd slept on the couch that night, was quickly awake. In no-time, Rick had woken up the others and next thing he knew, they were dragging him to the car and driving to the hospital with Godspeed. He was breathing very quickly now, and his heart was beating like a maniac. Mike was behind the wheel, Rick and Neil to his sides.

"You're all right, you're all right", Rick kept repeating, like a sort of mantra. He didn't feel all right, but it did help. A little.

Nevertheless, he wanted to scream: '_Drive faster, you bastard, I'm dying',_ but he couldn't. Mike didn't need the encouragement, though. He already drove dangerously fast.

"OUT OF THE WAY YOU BASTARDS, THIS IS AN EMERGENCY", Rick shouted, as he marched through the hospital doors with Vyvyan draped around his shoulder. Everyone stared at them. Vyvyan really couldn't care less.

He made it until the desk before collapsing. He heard the desk lady talking through the phone. "We have a boy here, he appears to be hyperventilating or suffocating…"

They put him on one of those hospital beds on wheels, giving him an oxygen mask to breathe through. They were driving him somewhere, but he didn't know where. He didn't register much of what was going on, except that his housemates were still walking with him.

With the dizziness and the disorientation clouding his mind, he had the sudden urge to have something, anything, to hold onto. So he reached out and the first thing he found was a hand. _Rick's _hand. _Oh, crap. Well, to hell with it, _he thought. He grabbed it, and surprisingly, Rick didn't reject it. Instead, his fingers folded around Vyvyan's. He didn't think he'd ever squeezed anything as hard. Not even that time when he'd tried to strangle SPG. He kept squeezing until he finally blacked out.

When he woke up, there were two things he noticed. One: there was an oxygen tube tickling in his nostrils and hooked behind his ears. Two: he was wearing one of those bloody awful hospital dresses. He also discovered a red button on a sort of remote control next to him, and he pressed it.

"Ah, you're awake", a cheerful voice said not much later. It was doctor French. "How are you feeling?"

"What happened?" was the first thing he asked. He hated how tiny his voice sounded.

She sat down next to him. "Well, as it turns out… one of the drugs given to you during chemotherapy has caused some severe damage to your lungs. Once we know more, you will know. Bottom line is: we are keeping you here for a few weeks and you have to wear these…", she straightened the tubes in his nose and ears, "for as long as we say so, so don't throw them out or anything, all right?"

"How bad is it?" He was scared for the answer.

She sighed. "They did a blood test. They don't know for certain yet, Vyvyan, but our best guess right now is pneumonia. It's a lung infection. But it's not… catastrophic. We're treating you here and you should be able to go home in at least three weeks. Usually you can just take your medication at home, but since you have Hodgkin Lymphoma… the risks are a lot higher."

He nodded understandingly, but he only got more questions.

"How did I pass out?"

"We think it's because your brain didn't get enough oxygen. You've only been out for a while, but you slept for a long time".

He looked at her, and noticed she was looking particularly sad. Just when he wondered why, she said: "Your mum would hate seeing you like this".

"Yeah", he answered, hoping she wouldn't get into the subject any further.

"They called her. She's on her way".

"WHAT? Why!?" He immediately regretted shouting, because his lungs hurt.

"She's your mother, Vyvyan. She deserves to know". Now she just sounded like Rick. "Get some rest", she said in conclusion, and she stood up.

Before she turned to the door, she said: "By the way, your friends are still here. One of them has been very persistent about seeing you. You know, the skinny one with the pigtails? Should I tell them to come back tomorrow? When you've rested a bit more?"

He nodded. "Yeah". The thought of seeing the others made him tired, especially all at once.

"Just a bastard you live with, isn't he?" She said with a significant smile before leaving the room.

He had no time to dwell on what she meant by that. He thought of mum, and their small, shabby flat. The empty bottles on the table. It hadn't been all that different from where he lived now, really. But to him it had made quite a bit of difference, actually. He thought of how happy he had been to exchange that shabby flat for the even shabbier student house he shared with Rick, Mike and Neil. Shabbiness had never bothered him much. They may have been poor, but mum had always made sure they had dinner on the table every evening. He'd never asked how she did it. Whenever someone visited them, she always said she was something different. Vyvyan himself had stopped asking when he was at an age he knew better. She may have been a shoplifter, but she took care of him.

So he hadn't been an unhappy child or teenager. But he'd been glad to be moving on: out of the flat, to college, so he could show mum he could have a life away from what they had known. A different life. He didn't know what exactly he had wanted her to see him become, but it wasn't this. It wasn't being sick and useless and not even being able to breath independently.

Mum was of course crying when she came in, and she made his face wet when she kissed him. He didn't say anything, he just let her hold him while she cried and said: "Oh Vyvyan", and "My boy". He didn't even ask how 'dad' was.

He'd expected her to be angry he hadn't told her, to yell at him like she usually did when he'd done something stupid, but she didn't seem angry for one second. He'd never seen her this sad. Once she calmed down a little, he told her he was sorry he didn't call her, but that he'd lost her number and hadn't known where she lived nowadays. He suspected she knew it was an excuse, but she took it.

She then started asking him all sorts of boring questions about his life: if he ate well, if his housemates took good care of him.

"Don't worry mum", he said. "They're all taking perfect care of me. 'Specially Rick".

"That bastard you introduced me to in the pub?" She sounded surprised.

"Yeah", he mumbled, thinking about how he'd squeezed his hand yesterday, feeling embarrassed. "That one".

When she left, she gave him a dry kiss this time, promising she'd be back soon. He was already asleep before the click-clacking of her heels in the hallway had faded away.

Unsurprisingly, the first person to march into his room him next day was Rick.

"Hello, Vyvyan", his housemate greeted him, sitting down next to him.

"Piss off".

"Oh hah-hah-hah Vyvyan", Rick answered. "Glad to see you still have the same _smashing_ sense of humour".

"I do actually!" Vyvyan grinned.

There was a bit of silence. "So, uh…" Rick looked down at his car keys and started fiddling with them. "How… how are you?"

"I'm in a hospital, and my lungs are such utter bollocks I can't even breath for myself! How do you think I am Rick!?" Screaming still hurt, but it did make him feel a lot better.

Instead of yelling back, Rick just smiled nervously. "Sorry… that was… a stupid question, I…."

"I'll probably be staying here for a couple of weeks", Vyvyan interrupted him, a bit friendlier now. They exchanged a look that lasted a bit too long for comfort.

"Anyway, I bwought you something", Rick said, grabbing his bag and taking something out of it. It was a big pile of all of his war comics. "These are for you".

"Really?" he asked in surprise, as Rick dropped them all in his lap. He knew how protective his housemate was of his war comics, even if he always pretended to hate them, so this was some kind of great gesture for Rick.

"I've gwown over them, anyway. It's time for me to be moving on to more important lecture", he said with a dramatic sigh. "Besides, I don't think it's very _wevolutionary_ to be reading about wars".

They then engaged in a long conversation about which comics they thought were the best of the collection, and disagreed on almost everything. Vyvyan of course preferred the ones that had the most explosions, and Rick the ones where peace was brought by a hero, and then they had a discussion about whether peace was poofy or not, and they'd had this discussion before, but he kept talking because he realized he really, really didn't want him to leave. Maybe Rick didn't want to leave either, because he didn't leave until the nurse told him Vyvyan really had to get some rest now.

"See you later then, Vyvyan", Rick said as he got his bag and stood up.

"See ya, poof".

He spent reading the comics for the rest of the afternoon and evening. It occurred to him how all the heroes dying in it died heroically in a battle. And he thought about how people always talked about having cancer as a battle, about 'fighting' it, but there weren't any comics on heroes dying of cancer. He didn't feel like he was fighting. He didn't feel like he was doing much of anything except not trying to become too sad or scared.

The next day, it was Neil who came to visit him. He brought him a Walkman and a mixtape full of hippie music for him to listen to, like Janis Joplin and Cat Stevens. It wasn't exactly his style, but he said thanks anyway.

It was confirmed a few days later he had, indeed, pneumonia. The drug that had caused it was called bleomycin, doctor Richardson told him, and it was taken out of his chemo cocktail. Pneumonia was more often a side effect of either the cancer or the treatment, and it was essential to try and cure it as fast as possible, since he was in a critical position. Side effects aside, he still had stage four Hodgkin's. Which was rubbish. So he would get extra aggressive treatment, probably antibiotics. The chemotherapy was given to him in his room, so he wouldn't have to move. For the first time, the anti-anxiety drugs were a relief. It was nice being able to drift away and not having to think about everything for a minute. Sleeping became his most common pastime.

He got at least a visitor a day, (usually Rick) and quite some presents as well. Mike brought him a book. _(__The Little Black Book of Improvised Explosives__)_ Helen brought him the second season of the Bastard Squad. It wasn't too bad, really, but in the end he was bloody bored. He was even more bored than he usually was, at home. But he counted the days to get back there.


	7. Chapter 7

**I'm so sorry for the huge delay, I've been distracted by wrapping up the school year and celebrating the holidays. I will update sooner in the upcoming time!**

Also, the talented red-river-prince/Yama made this beautiful drawing for this fic:  
post/91229868530/red-river-prince-illustration-for-a-fic-by

* * *

It was a very boring day in the house of the four students -now temporarily reduced to three. Even more boring than usual. He'd given all his comics away and Vyvyan was still in the bloody hospital. He'd always found Vyvyan disturbing the peace and quiet with his violent nonsense annoying, but not having him around was also kind of… weird. It had been two weeks now since he was hospitalized, and he would be for least for another week. Things had become slightly more peaceful in their household, but also much more boring. Rick sat on the couch, staring into nothingness.

"God, I wonder how bored Vyvyan must be, lying awound in the same woom all day, tied to all these machines", he sighed dramatically. "He must be even more bored than we are!"

"Well at least he has a couple of hot birds to take care of him every day", Mike commented from behind his paper. "That's more than we can say".

"Yeah, that's true", Rick had to admit, although he didn't exactly like the thought of Vyvyan being surrounded by hot birds.

Neil, who was sitting on the floor, cutting out shapes from origami paper, didn't comment.

"What are you doing, Neil?" Rick scorned. "Making a bit of _art nouveau_, are you?"

"It's for Vyvyan", Neil said. "I'm making him a postcard, right. And I'm making all of us out of origami paper and then glue them of the card, right. It's like, completely self-made and everything. Look, I'll show you". He searched through the pile of paper and held up a cut out little figure with a blue jacket and orange, spunky hair. "This is Vyv".

Rick stared at it. "Why has it got hair?"

"What do you mean?" Neil asked, confused.

"That one has hair. Vyvyan doesn't have any hair, does he? He's lost it all because he's _sick_! Have a bit of _wespect_, Neil".

"I know that, Rick!" Neil called out. "I'm just…"

"Guys, guys!" Mike shouted. They were quiet immediately. "What do you say we go see Vyv, huh?"

In a just few minutes they all stood by the car, and after Rick and Neil had a fight about who had to sit in the backseat, (Neil lost) they had a silent drive to the hospital. Rick was confused. On one hand, he was very happy to see Vyvyan again. On the other hand, he would never get used to seeing the punk like that.

They had went to see him every other day. This was better because he needed to sleep a lot. Most of the time, they went to see him with the three of them, but he'd gone a couple of times by himself as well. Vyvyan usually complained about how bored he was and Rick bought him more comics to read when he'd finished the old ones. They still never agreed on what made for a good story, but there were other things they did agree on. They both hated Thatcher, for instance, and they both disliked Neil.

One time, he'd found Vyvyan's mother sitting by Vyvyan's side as he was sleeping, and she had stood up to leave as he'd entered the room. But before she'd went out, she'd came up to him and hugged him.

"Thanks for everything", she'd said.

Rick thought he was usually very well-spoken and smart, but he'd had no idea what to say back. He'd muttered something about 'welcome Mrs. Vyvyan'.

He remembered the day he first met Vyvyan pretty clearly. He'd been sixteen, and Vyvyan being one year older than him, had been seventeen. They were still in secondary school. He had been on his way to his usual solitary spot in the study room, because that's where he always went when he had some time in between classes. He had no friends to hang out with at the time, just this one upper-class boy Henry he sometimes had lunch with. It didn't matter to him, his classmates were all stupid anyway. They weren't smart and poetic like him. He was going to achieve big things. Mummy had said so.

So on the day he met Vyvyan, he was on his way to the study room. When he passed the principal's office, he discovered a ginger haired boy in an oversized Ramones shirt and torn jeans thumping his head against the wall. His hair was very red and very wavy (no Mohawk yet). Rick stood there watching the strange boy repeatedly bashing his face against the wall for a while, wondering if he should say something.

"Excuse me", he said after maybe two minutes, "I don't mean to bother or anything, but are you aware you are looking quite stupid?"

The boy stopped and quickly turned his head. When he saw who was standing in front of him, he walked up to him and took on an aggressive pose. "What do YOU want, you spotty bastard?" His voice was the shrillest and loudest voice he had ever heard.

"Er… Well… I was just saying… you were looking a bit silly".

The other boy seemed to be considering this for a moment. "Why should I care?"

Rick tried to collect his thoughts for a proper response, when the ginger boy interrupted him. "Hang on", he'd said, pointing at him. "I know who you are. You're that complete bastard from my English class".

After a moment of thought, it slowly dawned to him. He had seen this boy before: he sat in front of him and was always laughing about stupid things with his mates.

"You must have mistaken me for someone else", Rick said. He knew most people in English class couldn't stand him, but he didn't necessarily want to admit that to this strange boy. It was hardly his fault he was so much more developed and intellectual than the others.

"Nah, it's you!" The other boy exclaimed. "You're the one who always writes all those poofy poems! All my mates think you're a twat!" He grinned.

Rick raised his chin. "You're just jealous because I'm better at English than you!"

"Aha!" The boy shouted. "So it is you then!"

"No", Rick lied. "I just said that because I'm better at English than everyone!"

That seemed to peak the other boy's interest in him. "How good?" he asked, in a different tone.

"Very good, better than all the others", Rick bluffed. "Why, I don't assume you need help, do you?".

The boy nodded, staring at his shoes, looking suddenly small. "I just had a talk with the principal. They're going to kick me out if I don't pass. This is already my second time doing the year, so…"

Rick was suddenly bored with this conversation. "Well that's very unfortunate and everything, but I'm afwaid it's none of my business. So if you'll excuse me, I'll be on my way", he said, turning away.

"Not so fast, bum face!", The boy said, grabbing the back of his jacket. Rick didn't like to be touched by strangers or pushed around, but he didn't know how to fight, so he just slapped him in the face like a girl.

"Is that all you've got, you girl?" The ginger said, and punched him on the jaw so fast he didn't even have time to try to avoid his fist. In response, Rick jumped and threw his whole weight at the other boy, in the hopes of knocking him over. It worked, but not without receiving the boy's knee in his bollocks. He squealed like a pig.

A spectacle of kicking, punching, rolling and even some hair pulling emerged. Thankfully, all the other children were in the cafeteria, so no one was there to see it but a group of hippies who strolled by. No one cared about them anyway.

"Hey!" A voice called out. It was the principal. "You two! In my office, right now!"

No matter how rebellious they both pretended to be, when the principal commanded them like that, they listened. So they sat next to each other in the sober office a moment later. They both looked beaten up, but it was painfully obvious who was the winner. The ginger boy's hair looked rough and the collar of his shirt was ripped, but his face was pretty much unharmed. Rick could already feel his eye and his cheek swelling up. Mummy and daddy would disapprove of this, he thought.

"Basterd, I never liked you, so I didn't expect any better from you", the principal started. "Pratt… I don't really like you, either, but at least you normally behave. What's gotten into you?"

Both of them started shouting and blaming each other, when the principal silenced them. They both got detention for two weeks. None of them protested.

"All right, I'll make you a deal", the ginger boy said when they stood outside of the office again. "You help me with English during detention, and I'll pay you… " he grabbed some money out of his pockets, "ten quid".

Rick snatched the money out of his hands. "Fine", he sighed after a moment of consideration.

The boy smiled. "Great! I'm Vyvyan by the way".

"I'm _Wick_".

"Wrick?"

"No, _Wick_, you see, with an _R_".

Vyvyan shook his head. "Well never mind, I don't need to know your name anyway. I can just call you poof."

"So, uhm, when do you want to meet?" Rick asked.

"Next week?"

Rick nodded.

"Don't tell anyone about this or I'll bash your face in", Vyvyan said, and he walked away.

For two weeks, they had spent every afternoon together in detention, but had never really become friends. Vyvyan had made sure of the fact that Rick had never mistook their relationship for anything other than strictly professional, and Rick had accepted this. He didn't need friends that were stupid bastards. But even though he would never have admitted it out loud, he'd kind of enjoyed the whirlwind that was Vyvyan's presence. Although -needless to be said- he'd had the attention span of a fly and teaching him English had went hand in hand with a lot of sighing and saying how bored he was, at least he wasn't as boring as most of his classmates. Outside of detention, though, they'd stayed away from each other. And when they had served their time, that had seemed to be the end of their temporary 'bond', or whatever it was.

So it was all the more ironic they'd coincidentally moved into the same student house four years later. Despite being older, they'd pretty much picked up where they had left. Rick thought he was an idiot, and Vyvyan thought he was a poof and a bastard. That was how it had always been. That was how it always would be. Or so he'd thought. Everything was weird these days.

Vyvyan's room was at the end of the hallway on the ICU. They already kind of knew their way around in the hospital, and were greeted by some of the staff.

"Hi boys", Helen said with a smile, as she came out of his room.

"Afternoon ma'am", Mike said with a small bow. "How is he?"

Helen sighed. "He's had a rough night. He had his chemo yesterday and he's had quite the night sweat. He's been throwing up a lot. The good news is: he seems to be responding well to the lung treatment, and we expect him to be ready to go home soon".

This relieved Rick more than he let on.

"The bad news is… you know how he's been having trouble eating lately?"

They all nodded.

"Well, his stomach seems unable of processing food, it all comes back out. So we are currently feeding him through a tube. We think he may need start using it at home as well."

A feeding tube? It made him feel a bit sick. The idea of Vyvyan not being able to eat by himself was ridiculous.

"Also, he had a bit of an episode this afternoon: he tried to pull out some of his IV lines".

"Can we see him?" Rick asked impatiently.

"Yes, I think that'd be fine. He just had a nap, so he should be fine to talk to you for… an hour?"

As they walked in, the first thing he noticed was the white plaster next to his nose, and the small white tube going into his left nostril.

"Hey there Vyv", Mike said, as he sat down next to him.

"Hi Mike", the punk said. He tried to grin and seem confident, but Rick could tell he was tired. "Why'd you bring those bastards?" He nodded to Rick and Neil.

"_Shut _up, Vyvyan", Rick said.

"Guys!" Mike interrupted. "Let's not fight now, all right? We've only got an hour". He shot Rick a glance and turned back to Vyvyan. "So Vyv, I heard you tried to break out today".

"Yeah", Vyvyan grinned. "I got very very bored".

"Just another week, Vyv, and you'll be out of here", Mike said reassuringly.

Vyvyan didn't answer for a moment. He looked a bit sad, and for a moment Rick thought he was going to cry. He didn't. "Did you feed Special Patrol Group?" he asked instead.

"I did, because no one else ever does anything…" Neil said.

They talked and gave him all sorts of things they had taken for him. Crossword puzzles, today's paper, Neil's ridiculous card… Neil had also taken him a small bag of cinnamon sticks. Since Vyvyan had trouble eating, it really was the perfect candy, since he could just suck on them. He was visibly enjoying it, and he seemed to become a bit more energetic. Helen even let them stay for an extra twenty minutes, but then they really had to go. Mike pulled Vyvyan into a short hug before they left, and for a split second, Rick considered doing the same. But he just said: "Bye, Vyvyan. See you soon".

"See ya, poof".

He may be a complete bastard, but as they left the hospital, he realized he liked Vyvyan. It was a strange thing to realize.


	8. Chapter 8

**Because of my long hiatus and the previous chapter that wasn't that eventful, here's another one.**

* * *

He hated it: the boredom, the food that wasn't food but bags of liquid, the smell of the hospital and the metallic smell that came with the chemo. He hated not being able to do anything by himself and lying in bed like a bloody child. He felt most embarrassed every time he had to go to the toilet. Since he was dependent on the oxygen tank for the first two weeks in the hospital, he couldn't go to the bathroom and a nurse needed to help him through a bedpan, which was basically a potty for adults. He hated this even more when the nurse talked to him in an overly Cheerful Voice like he wasn't twenty-two years old and hadn't learned how to piss in a potty ten years ago.

It was hard to keep up the act of being nice and polite when a nurse told him to please lift up his buttocks in a honey-sweet voice. So it happened on occasion he responded shouting something among the lines of: "YES, I KNOW HOW TO USE MY BOTTOM!"  
There were some nice nurses, though, of which Helen was his favourite. She joked around with him and never belittled him. He knew that in any other situation, he probably would have fancied her. But he was here, in the stupid hospital.

The only things he did like about being in the hospital were Helen and the frequent visits of doctor French and his friends. He'd never thought seeing Rick or Neil would fill him with feelings that were other than disgust and disdain, but he had sunken so low that it was in fact the highlight of his week. All the rest of it was so awfully, mind-numbingly dull he often thought even being dead must be more interesting. He had Rick's comics, Neil's hippie music tape he'd listened to so often by now he knew all the songs by heart and even sang along quietly sometimes, and he had Mike's book about explosives he read at least 10 pages a day of. So he had things to distract him. He just wasn't used to lying still for days on end.

A few days ago, he had become so bloody sick of it he decided to just try and go for the obvious route: violently trying to escape.  
With determined force, he'd ripped off his IV lines and stumbled out of bed, but he hadn't even made it out of the room. A nurse had caught him and he'd simply been too tired to fight back when she'd guided him back to his bed. Even if he hadn't, he realized there was simply no way around this.

It was a relief when he got moved from the ICU to the regular hospital floor. His lungs were getting better and he slowly regained his ability to breathe independently, until he only needed oxygen at night and parts of the day.

It had been lonely on the ICU, and he was glad he was able to see and talk to other patients. They put him in a room next to a young boy with leukemia: a talkative little chap who introduced himself as Humphrey and asked Vyvyan lots of questions. How old he was, what he was in the hospital for, if he was in school. He learned Humphrey was fourteen, had had cancer since he was nine and was in an adult hospital for an operation.

For a few days, Humphrey was his little mate. He even played a game of "I spy with my little eye" with Rick when his housemates came to visit. Rick was delighted he had found someone to play his stupid games with, and Humphrey was amusing himself trying to make the game as hard as possible.  
It was obvious Rick was sometimes pretending not being able to guess the object, ("Oh dear me, I have no idea what it is, do you Neil?") but it worked for Humphrey. Although Vyvyan thought his 'acting' was bollocks, he liked watching Rick interact with the boy. He'd never seen this side of him before: kind and playful, actually trying to get along with someone and, well, basically: not being a bastard.

The morning after that, he woke up to find the boy gone. The faces of the nurses when he asked them where he went told him all he needed to know. It was the first moment since the diagnose he cried. Not just the silent-tears-dripping-down-cheeks type of crying, either. He was a howling, blubbering mess. When he'd been crying for maybe five minutes, Doctor French came to his side to pull him into her arms. He wetted half of her shirt. She muttered these meaningless little sounds and words you say to a person who's crying, like _"ssshh"_ and _"I know",_ which he'd always found poofy, but it was actually a little soothing.

Rick, Mike and Neil came to see him the next day. Someone must have told them what happened, because they were all in a rather depressed mood when they came in. For Neil, this kind of behaviour was normal, but it wasn't for Rick and Neil .  
None of them mentioned the elephant in the room, but they were all thinking about it as they tried to make casual conversation.  
When they said goodbye after their awkward meeting, Rick visibly hesitated and leant forward slightly, as if he considered hugging him. But then he straightened his back and just said goodbye. Vyvyan stared as he walked out.

Having cancer was bollocks. He'd figured that much. But having someone in his direct environment die had been a sort of a wake-up call. This disease could kill him. He knew his suffering was far from over, but he was alive. And he did not want to die.

On Thursday morning, he woke up from Helen entering. "Time for your feeding session, love".

"You're late", Vyvyan commented.

"Yeah well, we had a patient with an infected G-tube. How are you feeling after tonight?" she asked, while attaching the bag of food to his IV pole. "Still feverish?"

"Nah. Just tired and bored".

She sighed, sitting down next to him. "It's rough, isn't it?"

"Yeah".

"I know", she said, looking at him with a sad face, and he believed she meant it. She didn't just say it to comfort him. "I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about that. You seem to have great friends, though. You're very lucky with that".

"Ah, Rick's not my friend", he corrected her. He really didn't understand why everyone kept mistaking them for friends when he so obviously despised the bastard.

"Oh come on, Vyvyan". She grinned. "He likes you, you know".

Vyvyan made a disgusted face. "Are you trying to make me sick again?"

"And you like him", Helen teased.

"No I don't! He's a complete bastard and I hate him".

She pulled up her eyebrows, but still smiled. "All right, if you say so". She got up.

"Come on, let's feed you. Up you sit", she said, and he propped himself up on his elbows while she made sure his head was supported by his pillow. He'd been fed like this for a week now, and the whole thing still seemed very strange to him. He just had to sit still for about half an hour while nutrition's flowed from a bag through a tube into his nose, and from his nose into his stomach. It was the most boring way to eat he could think of, but he had no choice. It was either this or throwing up all over his bed sheets again. That wasn't very appealing either.

"You look well!" she said after the feeding session. She looked almost proud. "We have a meeting with your medical team tomorrow and we'll talk about when we can get you home".

The meeting meant they would talk about if the chemotherapy was working and if the cancer had shrunk, stayed the same or grown. His mum would also there when the Doctor would tell him, which made him feel slightly uncomfortable.

"Good to see you, Vyvyan", Doctor Richardson said with an abundant smile, giving him a hand with a powerful grip. Everything about him radiated Health and Authority, but for some reason, he always made Vyvyan feel like he was the most important person in the room.

"It's good to see you too, doctor", he said in his most polite way of talking.

"Mrs. Basterd, always a pleasure", he said, moving onto Mum.

"Oh, no, the pleasure's all mine", she said, and smiled in a way that made Vyvyan suspect she would like to have it off with him at any other place or time. He knew how mum was in relation to men.

The doctor sat down. "Well, let's get down to it, shall we?"

Mum nodded. Her face turned suddenly grim, as if she suddenly remembered she wasn't here to chat with handsome doctors.

"It's good news!" Doctor Richardson said. "You're almost cured from your Pneumonia. You're off the oxygen tank for the most part, that's truly fantastic. The other good news is… the tumors haven't grown. Your cancer is stable."

His first reaction was relief, and Mum smiled. "Well that's great, isn't it?"

"Ah, Doctor?" Vyvyan asked. "That means they also haven't shrunk, then, doesn't it?"

"That's right. I know this may not sound like good news, but as your doctor I would like to assure you our medical team definitely considers this good news. We think you're well enough to go home tomorrow", doctor Richardson said. "We think it's best to keep on the same track and continue the treatment as it is".

"How long?" Vyvyan asked.

"We're doing another cycle of chemotherapy, and see how the tumors have responded in three months".

Both Vyvyan and Mum nodded seriously. After his initial relief, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to think. He supposed it was better than hearing the treatment wasn't working, but practically speaking nothing had changed. He was still carrying the same amount of the stupid cancer inside of his body than he did on the day of the diagnose. Was that good? He didn't know.

When Doctor Richardson stood up to leave, he patted Vyvyan on the shoulder. "Don't give up, Vyvyan. You're doing extremely well and you have a very good chance of complete recovery".

_Yeah, they say that a lot_, he thought.

He turned to Mum. "Mrs. Basterd, I hope this has been able to put your mind at ease for now?"

"Yes, yes, thank you Doctor", she nodded.

"That's a remarkable son you have ma'am", he said in conclusion, and although it sounded like a compliment, Vyvyan wondered if he had gotten wind of his sometimes rather rebellious behaviour.

After Doctor Richardson had left, Mum stayed with him for a while.

"You can always come home with me, you know", she said, caressing the smooth and hairless surface of his head.

"Nah", he answered. "I'm going home with the lads, if that's okay mum".

She smiled. "Of course. It's just… oh never mind. But they're just children, Vyvyan. Don't you think it's a big responsibility for them to take care of you?"

"Nah… we're all right". He wished she would drop it.

"Okay dear. It's your decision. Well, I should go. Behave yourself!"

"Okay mum".

She promised to visit him at his house soon, which he wasn't particularly looking forward to, but the idea of being back in the shabby student house seemed like heaven at the moment. He asked a nurse for a phone and called home to tell them he was being released tomorrow. Of course it had to be Rick that picked up.

"Hello this is _Wick_".

"Rick, I'm being released tomorrow, so come get me, you bastard".

"Oh it's you, Vyvyan!" There seemed to be a hint of relief in his voice. "H… how are you?"

"You just saw me yesterday, Rick! Just come and get me tomorrow, okay?" And he hung up.

It was early in the afternoon when the arrival of his three housemates woke him up. Or, more specifically: Rick's loud and annoying voice reverberating through the room.

"Up, up Vyvyan! Come on! We don't have all day, do we now?"

"Piss off", he snarled, but feeling secretly relieved.

They'd brought his clothes in a plastic bag. It was a good feeling to put on his usual jeans, shirt and Heavy Metal jacket. He studied himself in the mirror of the bathroom. Apart from the feeding tube into his nose and the ugly white plaster that kept it in place, he had looked worse.

The nurses helped with getting all the medical equipment for his feeding tube into the car. Then Helen gave him a hug (there was far too much hugging these days) and waved goodbye before going back inside.

Then he sat there. In the car. In his normal clothes. With his housemates. It was weird, but that felt really really great.

"So, where are we going?" Rick asked excitedly.

"What do you mean Rick? Aren't we going home?" Mike said.

"Well, aren't we going to _celebwate_?" Rick sounded just a tad offended this wasn't immediately obvious to Mike.

"Yeah, right! Vyvyan's finally home, we should celebrate, yes, of course…!" Neil agreed.  
"We should go to the mall!"

"Neil, you rarely have good ideas, but I quite like that one", Mike said.

"TO THE MALL!" Vyvyan shouted.

So they drove to the mall and had ice-cream, even Vyvyan. Some people stared at his tube, but he just stared back or asked them what they were looking at. After a while of walking around annoying shop owners, Vyvyan started to get quite tired. So Mike went into the supermarket and came back with a shopping cart. "Hop aboard, Vyv".

He climbed in and Rick came in behind him. They yelled in unison as Mike and Neil brought the cart into motion. Rick grabbed Vyvyan's arm and his stomach pressed against his back in a position that he might have found a little too intimate otherwise. But he didn't care now. He just laughed as they raced through the mall.


End file.
